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I hope this is a "damp squib" and that moderators can lock this thread, but am worried that this following signals the start of a new war. Retired GOC of India’s Srinagar based 15 Corps, Syed Ata Hasnain, wrote about the impact of such a war on India:https://swarajyamag.com/world/the-geopo ... s-and-iran

Economically, war will be a disaster for the world, and maybe even worse for India. The Indian economy is one of those yet surviving international pressures but that is on the basis of energy prices lower than USD 75 per barrel. The first shot fired in the Gulf and strains of closure of Hormuz will send oil to 150 USD per barrel.

Loss of confidence of the diaspora could lead to annual losses of remittances worth 35-40 billion USD, besides the expenditure required for mass scale repatriation. The sky rocketing price of energy will have a major effect on China, which too imports 80 per cent of its needs. A Chinese economy in free fall will shake the world’s economy.

DUBAI: Four commercial vessels were targeted by "acts of sabotage" near the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates on Sunday morning, the UAE foreign ministry said in a statement amid rising tensions between neighboring Iran and the US.

The statement added the vessels, that were targeted near Fujairah and at a distance of 115 kilometers from Iran, were “civilian trading vessels of various nationalities”, and that the UAE was investigating the incident with local and international bodies.

Rumors about ships inside the port being sabotaged were unfounded, the ministry added.

The port of Fujairah continues to operate as normal and there were no victims of the sabotage incident.

The ministry added that targeting merchant ships and threatening the lives of crew members is a “dangerous development,” and that the government considers the acts of sabotage to be a threat to the safety and security of the UAE.

The country called on the international community to prevent any party from compromising maritime safety and security.

The ministry statement was tweeted by the official news agency WAM.

Bahrain condemned the acts of sabotage, saying it was a "criminal act" that threatened maritime traffic in the region. The kingdom said it stood with the UAE.

Earlier on Sunday, the UAE emirate of Fujairah denied media reports that claimed a series of explosions had rocked its port on Sunday.

Claims from a number of news outlets, which were then shared on social media, said there had been explosions on Sunday morning and that fires had broken out on some of the docked oil tankers in the port.

Fujairah government’s media office tweeted a statement on Sunday denying there had been any explosions and that operations were continuing as normal.

It also called on media organizations to be “accurate” in their reporting and to only publish information once it was “confirmed by official sources.”

The harbor master of Fujairah port, who had been on shift at the time, also confirmed that there was no truth to the reports.

Carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) is now in the Red Sea earlier than planned at the direction of the White House, USNI News has learned.

The Lincoln Carrier Strike Group left the Mediterranean and transited the Suez Canal on Thursday, officially entering U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. Central Command.

“ABECSG has been conducting operations in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations for several weeks, but expedited their transit to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to protect U.S. forces and interests in the region,” the Navy said in a statement published following an earlier version of this post.“ABECSG will be positioned by CENTCOM where it will best be able to protect U.S. forces and interests in the region and to deter any aggression.”

The move follows a statement earlier this week from the National Security Council that, due to provocative behavior from Iran and new intelligence estimates, the U.S. was repositioning the strike group from the Mediterranean to the Gulf. The Pentagon also deployed a U.S. Air Force bomber detachment that included B-52 Stratofortress bombers to the region.

On Sunday, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton called the move a reaction to a “number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.”

The assessments prompted CENTCOM Commander Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie to ask for the strike group and the bombers.

Intelligence showing that Iran is likely moving short-range ballistic missiles aboard boats in the Persian Gulf was one of the critical reasons the US decided to move an aircraft carrier strike group and B-52 bombers into the region, according to several US officials with direct knowledge of the situation.

If these reports are, indeed, accurate, then it worth asking what are Iranian ballistic missiles doing on ships? CNN noted that it was unclear if the missiles were intended to be launched from the vessels or if they were just being transported. While unusual, launching ballistic missiles from surface vessels is feasible. India’s navy operates the ship-launched Prithvi III missile, and South Korea successfully tested a Hyunmoo 2C from what appeared to be a cargo vessel. Indeed, there are some indications that Iran might at least have looked into this possibility in the past. In 2000/2001, researchers from the Malek-Ashtar University of Technology, an institution associated with Iran’s missile program, published a paper in the Iranian Journal for Maritime Engineering outlining their design for a sea-born Scud-B missile launcher. However, as the U.S. learned, launching ballistic missiles from ships is not an easy task, and like most missile-related activities, doing so requires extensive testing. So far, no ship-launches of Iranian ballistic missiles have been observed, and Iran sneakily developing this capability while avoiding the watchful eyes of Western intelligence services seems highly unlikely.

Just as important as technical considerations is Iran’s lack of a regional strategic rationale for basing ballistic missiles on surface vessels. The main advantage of basing ballistic missile on surface ships is the de-facto extension of range. However, range is not an issue when it comes to Iran targeting U.S. forces in the region because the Islamic Republic already operates a large arsenal of missiles with ranges up to 2000km and a particularly impressive force of shorter-range precision-guided solid-fuel missiles. This arsenal puts all major U.S. bases in the region within striking range of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Systems like the Qiam, the Zolfaghar, the Hormuz, and the Khalij-e Fars are not only deployed with the aim of targeting U.S. American military bases in the region, but were also originally designed to do so.

The caveats that apply to range also apply to survivability. A large part of Iran’s missile force is located in deep underground bases, and many of the country’s launch platforms can be disguised as civilian trucks, allowing them to blend in with traffic. It is hard to imagine how in terms of survivability single ships in the Persian Gulf—which is swarming with U.S. naval forces—would offer any advantage over current Iranian basing modes.

What is Iran Really Doing with its Missiles?

With ship-launched ballistic missiles seeming like a highly impractical and unlikely way to target U.S. forces in the region, this leaves the possibility of Iran merely transporting the missiles. Iran could use ships to deploy the missiles to some of its islands in the Persian Gulf, several of which, such as Abu Musa and Qeshm, are already known to house anti-ship missiles. However, yet again, there is little strategic rationale for doing so (except potential signaling). Unlike ballistic missiles, anti-ship missiles tend to have very limited ranges and do not easily pass mountainous terrain. Thus, forward-deploying them to islands makes sense. Basing ballistic missiles on these islands would result in only marginally increased ranges, but there is potential for substantially increased vulnerability when compared to deployment on Iran’s mainland.

All of these considerations makes a smuggling operation to one of Iran’s clients the most likely explanation. Current foreign operators of Iranian-made ballistic missiles include Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis, the Syrian regime, allegedly Iraqi Shi’a militias, and potentially pro-Iranian armed groups in Syria. Iraq only has a minuscule coastline and can easily be supplied via its long and porous land border with Iran. While Syria and, by extension, Lebanon could be a possible destination, the choice of ships makes it seem highly improbable. According to the Washington Post, the vessels in question are dhows, small traditional wooden boats common to the Gulf area. Dhows are a terrible choice for transporting weapons to Syria, but are a great option for smuggling operations closer to home. There is ample evidence that Iran is using the small and inconspicuous ships to ferry arms to the Houthi movement in Yemen.

Guptaji, is UAE so vast or its sky so polluted that ppl cannot see effects of a fire at the dockyard, from downtown/ high-rise hotels? Something seriously wrong if such a thing remains a rumor one way or the other. The UAE govrmand statements sound like Paki DGSPR post-Balakot, but smoke should be clearly visible from the big hotels. Given cheen-organeutan love these days, I would be more fearful of a NoKo -US war. Pre-emptive strike.

Last edited by UlanBatori on 13 May 2019 01:57, edited 1 time in total.

"Iran is the major destabilizing influence in the Middle East, and we aim to fix that," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CNBC on Saturday. "What we've seen from the Iranians is increased threats... it's real... and it appears to be current."

Earlier on Saturday, Iran's state Press TV headlined President Hassan Rouhani's claims that the country is "facing all-out-war," with its leadership rallying the population as tensions escalate. "Rouhani," reported Press TV, "said the current wave of pressure on Iran is even more difficult than the one experienced during the Iran-Iraq war period," and the country "needs unity and cohesiveness at the time of increased political and economic pressure, which he described as unprecedented in the history of the country since the Islamic revolution of 1979."

A day earlier, on Friday, Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabai Nejad was reported by Iran's ISNA news agency as taunting the dispatch of the U.S. carrier group. "Their billion-dollar fleet can be destroyed with one missile," he said during Friday prayers. "If they attempt any move, they will [see] dozens of missiles because at that time officials won’t be in charge to act cautiously, but instead things will be in the hands of our beloved leader."

just like they fixed iraq , syria, colombia, libya and a dozen other places. john bolton saab is impatient to have his war.

with no recourse left, iran will have to fall back on its caspian sea route and become a economic client state of russia and china.

venezuela maduro has not folded and run, despite attempts to engineer a tiananmen square there. his army mostly stays loyal and russian advisors are on site. sections of GOTUS are chafing at the bit to unleash southcom from panama and invade to 'restore freedom'

the american way of 'restoring freedom' ends up killing more people than it saves as usual.

meantime yesterday mysterious sabotage attacks on tankers at UAE port of fujairah next to hormuz straitscould be false flag ops by UAE intel to pin the blame on the iranians

in libya meanwhile there is full scale civil war between khalifa haftar and the tripoli militias. everyone has picked their side and funding them. turkey, uae, egypt, saudi are among the sides embroiled in that mess.

Persian gulf is sitting on tinderbox and just one matches left unattended can see the whole peninsula go up in flame.There wont be many supporters for Persia though in the region. But the key here would be that even if Iran is bombed back to stone age, How are they going to manage Ayatollahs removed.I think Arabs, Israel and supporters are still hoping for internal disturbances to overthrow stifling mullacracy which gives a chance to USA to rebuild Iran (after duely bombing it to pieces).I don't know if there are Armed Iranian groups supported by West ?

Singha wrote:in libya meanwhile there is full scale civil war between khalifa haftar and the tripoli militias. everyone has picked their side and funding them. turkey, uae, egypt, saudi are among the sides embroiled in that mess.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya’s internationally recognized government denounced its foe Khalifa Haftar as an “aspiring military dictator” on Friday and urged U.S. President Donald Trump to stop foreign support for his month-long offensive on the capital Tripoli.

Fayez Serraj, prime minister of the beleaguered Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), said Haftar’s U.S.-allied backers were turning Libya into a proxy battleground, risking a war with global implications and further mass migration to Europe.

Haftar has the support of U.S. allies Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which have helped train his soldiers.

France has supported Haftar as a way to fight militants in a country in chaos since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington, does not see a direct military confrontation as an option.

“H.R. McMaster said that, ‘There are two ways of fighting America: One is asymmetrically, and the other is stupid,’” he told The Jerusalem Post. “In other words, there’s only one way to fight the United States at this point. And that is through terrorism and insurgency. The idea that Iran would square off with the United States in a conventional conflict is not serious.”

He added that sending a carrier group to the Gulf is meant only to send a message.

“When [US] Ambassador [to Russia] Jon Huntsman talks about carrier groups, he calls them a hundred thousand tons of diplomacy,” Schanzer said. “When you put that in into play, it changes the way that your adversary is going to respond to you. They’re going to be more fearful, and that’s what we call leverage. The hope is that that’s what we’re talking about here, between the financial pressure and the deployment of force not to fight, but to influence, we could potentially start to see changes.”

Ilan Goldenberg, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, expressed similar sentiments. He told the Post that the US should not expect an immediate crisis, but rather that Iran will once again take a slow-motion crawl toward a nuclear weapon. .."Fundamentally, nobody actually wants a direct military conflict," he said. "I think that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu will be okay if the Americans lead the charge, and I think Trump would be okay if the Israelis lead the charge, but I don't think Netanyahu or Trump wants to be on their own in a major conflict like that. So that's the good news. The bad news is you can always have miscalculation."

Mike Pregent, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, feels differently. He thinks that now is not the time to negotiate a new deal.

“This is the most pressure this regime has been under for 40 years,” he told the Post. “This is the time to continue to put maximum pressure on Iran and watch what they do over the next 18 months. Every month, the United States will put new sanctions on individuals and entities of Iran."

According to Pregent, by the time the election happens, “whether Trump wins or not, the Democrat presidential candidate, if Trump doesn’t win, will have enough leverage with Iran to get a nuclear deal that could pass Congress. That can pass as a treaty because it will address ballistic missiles. It’ll address terrorism; it’ll address sunset clauses. It would address inspections, everything. This is not the right time.”

Former US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said that with no agreement or negotiations, a military confrontation is more likely.

“If the JCPOA collapsed, you could have new negotiations, and try to get a better deal,” he said. “But there’s no evidence that Trump really has a concept of what that deal looks like."

“If it’s Pompeo’s 12 points, it’s essentially regime change,” Shapiro continued. “If it’s just a longer version of the JCPOA that includes missiles, it seems unlikely that they will be able to reach that kind of agreement when the Iranians think they can get maybe a better deal and wait for another administration in a year and a half.”

Shapiro, a distinguished visiting fellow at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies think tank, said that another reason to force Iran out of the deal is to create a justification for a military strike, but then added: “That also isn’t something Trump has shown any appetite for. Some of his advisers may have, but he himself has been very critical of the Iraq war; tries to get US troops out of Syria. He doesn’t want to be involved in wars in the Middle East, which he calls, ‘nothing but sand and death.’”

According to the former ambassador, “It brings us closer to a moment when with Iran advancing on its nuclear program again, and without a prospect of a negotiation and with time ticking on Trump’s term in office that there may be no option other than a military option to slow them down,” he said. “And at that point it’s not at all unlikely that rather than do it himself, Trump would say to Netanyahu, ‘You have a green light.’ No Israeli prime minister has ever been faced with an American president saying, ‘feel free to attack Iran and good luck.’ That’s a decision no Israeli prime minister ever had to make. But it’s one that this current scenario brings us closer to every single day.”

The US, which has played a key role in upping the tensions with Iran, has not leapt on the story to point to Iranian aggression. Does that mean evidence does not point toward Iran or that the US primarily is upping its rhetoric but wants to avoid a real escalation? Any real incident occurring near the oil corridor of the Strait of Hormuz will certainly lead to economic concerns across the globe. So far “sabotage” is the term the victims prefer for what happened to their ships. What precisely happened has not been revealed, which adds to the rumor mill, and tensions, rather than reducing them. Riyadh may be waiting to see what is the best course of action. Bringing reporters aboard would reveal what happened and settle the mystery. For now, Riyadh says the incident is a “criminal act” and threatens navigation.

Despite the Trump Administration’s aggressive stance, there have been no major incidents in the Persian Gulf for almost two years, after a spate of provocative acts by Iran—thirty-six in 2016 and fourteen in 2017—against U.S. warships, a Pentagon official told me. The last one was on August 14, 2017, when an Iranian drone approached the U.S.S. Nimitz as an F/A-18 was trying to land on the aircraft carrier. The drone, which was flying at night, did not have its lights on; repeated radio calls to its controlling station went unanswered. The Nimitz was in international waters, beyond the twelve-mile limit any nation can claim.

“We haven’t seen an unsafe interaction since then,” Captain Bill Urban, the spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told me. “It has been a long time, considering how many incidents we had in 2016 and 2017.” The U.S. still has regular interactions with Iranian ships. “It’s not unusual to have several attack craft come out and approach our ships and take pictures. But now they routinely stop at a safe distance or approach in manner that is not escalatory,” he said. “We continue to remain vigilant.”

Frustration is building up in Washington, as maximum pressure has produced minimum strategic results, and the clock is ticking,” Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, told me. “Some in Washington and the region would welcome, or try to provoke, a confrontation in an effort to achieve what sanctions have failed at so far—cutting Iran down to size.” Vaez outlined two scenarios: Iran digs in, “prompting a frustrated White House to double down yet again on measures that alienate key allies and risk regional escalation,” or Iran calculates that it has little left to lose “and decides to escalate further in the nuclear realm or in the region.”

Iran has made aggressive moves of its own. Last month, Tehran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes, if the Administration blocks it from exporting its own oil. Last week, President Hassan Rouhani announced that Tehran would no longer comply with two smaller provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal: exporting excess uranium and also heavy water from its nuclear program. (It might not be able to export the stockpiles anyway, since the U.S. recently vowed to sanction any country that buys either.)

The sense of foreboding is tangible, the threats from both sides are no longer rhetorical. Before the nuclear-deal negotiations began, in 2013, Washington was consumed with hyped talk of the United States or its allies bombing Iran. If the nuclear deal formally dies, talk of military confrontation may again fill both capitals—even if neither country wants it. “Make no mistake, we’re not seeking a fight with the Iranian regime,” McKenzie, the Centcom commander, said last week. “But we do have a military force that’s designed to be agile, adaptive, and prepared to respond to a variety of contingencies in the Middle East and around the world.” The problem, as U.S. history proves, is that the momentum of confrontation is harder to reverse with each escalatory step.

This seems like a deliberate attempt by someone to rock the boat. It is interesting that both the allies of ME and the US have not tried to point fingers at anyone, just a lot of warnings being thrown around by all sides..

Wonder what's cooking..

If there is a hot war, the US and its allies will avoid putting boots on the ground at all costs.

sudhan wrote:This seems like a deliberate attempt by someone to rock the boat. It is interesting that both the allies of ME and the US have not tried to point fingers at anyone, just a lot of warnings being thrown around by all sides.. .

Actually, post cold war, the "neo-cons" (let's cal them that for convenience) made a list of countries that had to be changed/altered/bombed. http://www.aei.org/

- Was the leader of this pack and this list came (surprisingly, a little before 9/11 in GWB presidency, 1st term). Post 9-11, they still went after Iraq, and Under Obama, they still went after Syria and Libya. They never apologize for the destabilization, they just keep soldiering on. To them America is just a vast corporation + military to be exploited ruthlessly.

The folks that are doing this have blood on their hands. They should please stop.

The head of Iran's National Security Foreign Policy Committee said the international community must be wary of "making crises" surrounding the "sabotage" of four commercial ships off the coast of the United Arab Emirates over the weekend, as tensions continue to rise between Iran and the United States.

When asked about the attack on Monday, President Donald Trump fired a verbal warning to Iran, telling reporters, "We'll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a bad mistake."

Heshmatollah Falahat Pisheh, the head of Iran's National Security Foreign Policy Committee, said in an interview with Iranian state media Monday that "Iran and the United States can manage the crisis by themselves."

"But there are third parties who might make the atmosphere of the region more sensitive in terms of security by making deviant moves," he said. "There are different groups whose goal is to make the region unsafe. Therefore, there must be red lines between Iran and the United States in the management of the events which prevents third parties from making crises."

At a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

Spain has withdrawn a frigate from a U.S.-led naval group in the Gulf because it was now focusing on alleged threats from Iran rather than an agreed objective to mark an historic seafaring anniversary, the Spanish government said on Tuesday.

“The U.S. government has taken a decision outside of the framework of what had been agreed with the Spanish Navy,” acting Defense Minister Margarita Robles told reporters in Brussels.

That led to the temporary pullout of the 215-sailor Mendez Nunez from the group led by aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as the mission no longer had the objective of celebrating 500 years since the first circumnavigation of the world, as envisaged by a bilateral U.S.-Spanish agreement, she said.

Yleem Poblete, a prominent Iran hawk, is resigning as assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance, The Washington Post reported Monday night, citing U.S. officials and congressional aides. The State Department didn't offer an explanation for Poblete's departure, but she has repeatedly clashed with her boss, Undersecretary of State Andrea Thompson, the Post reports.

Poblete's views are much more closely aligned with National Security Adviser John Bolton than with Thompson's, former national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, the Post reports. One high-profile clash between Poblete and Thomson was over the State Department's report in April on compliance with arms control accords.

Poblete's office writes the report, and Reuters reported in April that U.S. intelligence agencies and some State Department officials were "concerned that the document politicizes and slants assessments about Iran," raising fears that "the administration was painting Iran in the darkest light possible, much as the George W. Bush administration used bogus and exaggerated intelligence to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq." Poblete had unconventionally "sought to include information such as news stories and opinion pieces in the report," two sources told Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday denied a New York Times report that U.S. officials were discussing a military plan to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter any attack or nuclear weapons acceleration by Iran.

“I think it’s fake news, OK? Now, would I do that? Absolutely. But we have not planned for that. Hopefully we’re not going to have to plan for that. And if we did that, we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Conflicting signals from both sides could be read as a march to war or business as usual.

What it all adds up to, depending on whom you ask, is the gathering storm of Iraq 2.0, or standard posturing and flexing designed precisely to contain tensions, not escalate them. With such sparse information, you can look at the same public developments and draw wildly opposite conclusions about what’s about to happen in the Middle East. In fact, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations and during the Trump administration in particular, one likelihood is that the current tensions are routine and will subside, as many previous rounds have.

The problem is that the flare-ups are occurring in the context of foggy and incomplete information, as U.S. officials cite intelligence reports of threats from Iran without saying what those threats are. The Iranians are looking at a lot of the same information—and if they guess wrong about what it means, the conflict no one says they want risks drawing closer with any overreaction or hastily planned escalation.

New Delhi — President Trump’s brinkmanship on Iranian oil has sucker-punched India, which is dealing with the potential cutoff of a primary energy supplier in the middle of a national election and a low-intensity trade war.The emerging Asian giant now finds itself in a crossfire between two of its allies, the U.S. and Iran, with few options because of its strategic dependence on Washington and much to lose whichever side it takes.The Trump administration’s imposition of harsh sanctions on Iranian crude exports went into effect in November, but the sanctions were waived for eight countries, including India, China, Turkey and Japan. On April 22, Washington announced that the waivers would be revoked effective May 1.The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly appealed to Washington for an extension until after India’s lengthy national elections end this month and a new government is formed in New Delhi, but the appeal fell on deaf ears. Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan insisted in a tweet that “a robust plan” was in place to ensure “additional supplies from other major oil-producing countries.”But losing exports from Iran, which was its third-largest crude supplier after Iraq and Saudi Arabia, comes as a hard knock to India, which imports more than 80% of the oil it needs. It has also fueled a national debate over a response to Mr. Trump’s confrontational policy while India tries to cultivate deeper economic ties with Iran.The ambivalence within the Indian establishment was underscored this week as Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited New Delhi for talks with top Indian officials — even as Tehran and Washington were trading charges of seeking to provoke a clash in the Middle East. Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, keeping in mind his country’s commercial considerations, reportedly told Mr. Zarif that the decision on purchasing Iranian oil would be made after the elections.Though no official statement was made to this effect, any such assurance by the Indian foreign minister

i have seen a pic of one damaged tanker. a plate is buckled at the waterline. not a missile strike...it was more like a magnetic limpet small mine someone placed and went away from back of the ship. it is seen in tintin comics.

pretty easy if these tankers were anchored outside fujairah port, not at all easy if the ship was moving.

WASHINGTON — The intelligence that caused the White House to escalate its warnings about a threat from Iran came from photographs of missiles on small boats in the Persian Gulf that were put on board by Iranian paramilitary forces, three U.S. officials said.

Additional pieces of intelligence picked up threats against commercial shipping and potential attacks by Arab militias with Iran ties on Americans on U.S. troops in Iraq.

As military officials struggled to show that the threat from Iran was growing, intelligence officials declassified a photograph of one of the small boats, called dhows, carrying what was described as a functional Iranian missile.

The Pentagon has not released the photograph. On its own, two U.S. officials said, the photograph was not compelling enough to convince the American public and lawmakers, nor foreign allies, of the new Iranian threat.

The other photographs, which remain classified, show the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps loading missiles on to the boats in several different Iranian ports, the two officials said. It is believed the boats are under the Revolutionary Guards’s control.